Abstract
This book chapter takes a close look at two well-known reading assessments – running records and miscue analysis - that are often not put in conversation with the other when evaluating a reader's process. In order to explore what happens when using these assessments in tandem, we designed a single student case study involving a fifth grade girl and eight sessions of interviews, running records and miscue analysis. Our findings highlight selected themes that emerged from the analyses to reveal patterns the reader used across the sessions and showcase different aspects of the reader's reading processes from the perspectives of both assessments. We argue that understanding the theoretical and empirical contributions of both reading assessments contributes to the development of teacher expertise about readers and their reading processes.
TopWhile informal reading inventories appeared on the reading scene in the early 1940s (Betts, 1941), the roots of reading inventories emerged more than 25 years earlier. Influential reading scholars, including Waldo (1915) and Gray (1916), described various informal measures designed to track the rate of students’ oral and silent reading, as well as students’ abilities to decode words and understand what they read. These early assessments involved administration by trained reading educators, students reading paragraphs that gradually increased in difficulty, marking of student reading errors, and the use of comprehension questions (Johns & Lunn, 1983). These informal assessments shared many characteristics of what would become the informal reading inventories used extensively between 1940 and 1980.
During the early 1940s, these efforts were codified in the “subjective reading inventory” (Betts, 1941), which led to various commercially produced reading inventories that became available in the 1960s (Botel, 1966; McCracken, 1966; Silvaroli, 1969). These reading assessments generally featured graded word lists, lists of nonsense words, reading passages, and comprehension assessments. The goals of these reading inventories were to identify students’ reading levels, monitor students’ abilities to decode and comprehend text, and, thus, inform instruction.
While informal reading inventories provided a useful lens on children’s reading processes and invited teachers to attend to what children did as they read, critiques of these assessments included difficulty in controlling for students’ prior knowledge, the differing demands presented by informational versus narrative texts, and the complexities that accompany the assessment of comprehension (Caldwell, 1985; Sarroub & Pearson, 1998). In response, reading educators have attempted to create more nuanced and useful formative reading assessments to directly inform instruction. These formative assessments include running records and miscue analysis.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Error: When error is used in Running Records, it is any variation the reader makes from the text.
Miscue Analysis: Miscue analysis is an assessment tool to examine children’s meaning-making processes.
Running Records: Running record is a common tool for teachers to document and monitor children’s use of strategic activities while reading.
Retrospective Miscue Analysis: Retrospective Miscue Analysis is a conversation that teachers use to revalue and recognize the reader’s strengths and explore areas for improvement.
Miscue: A miscue is any variance readers make from a written text in a miscue analysis.
Reading Comprehension: Reading comprehension is making meaning of the text.